@Article{Caughey2018,
  author="Caughey, Devin
    and Dunham, James
    and Warshaw, Christopher",
  title="The ideological nationalization of partisan subconstituencies in the American States",
  journal="Public Choice",
  year="2018",
  month="Apr",
  day="23",
  abstract="Since the mid-twentieth century, elite political behavior in the
    United States has become much more nationalized. In Congress, for example,
    within-party geographic cleavages have declined, roll-call voting has become
    more one-dimensional, and Democrats and Republicans have diverged along this
    main dimension of national partisan conflict. The existing literature finds
    that citizens have only weakly and belatedly mimicked elite trends. We show,
    however, that a different picture emerges if we focus not on individual
    citizens, but on the aggregate characteristics of geographic constituencies.
    Using biennial estimates of the economic, racial, and social policy
    liberalism of the average Democrat and Republican in each state over the
    past six decades, we demonstrate a surprisingly close correspondence between
    mass and elite trends. Specifically, we find that: (1) ideological
    divergence between Democrats and Republicans has widened dramatically within
    each domain, just as it has in Congress; (2) ideological variation across
    senators' partisan subconstituencies is now explained almost completely by
    party rather than state, closely tracking trends in the Senate; and (3)
    economic, racial, and social liberalism have become highly correlated across
    partisan subconstituencies, just as they have across members of Congress.
    Overall, our findings contradict the reigning consensus that polarization in
    Congress has proceeded much more rapidly and extensively than polarization
    in the mass public.",
  issn="1573-7101",
  doi="10.1007/s11127-018-0543-3",
  url="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-018-0543-3"
}
